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January 22, 2026 at 10AM ET | 4PM CET

We’re excited to invite you to our upcoming academic webinar featuring Dr. Michael Watson and Dr. Yuri Balasanov from Northwestern University. This will be a broadcast of the team’s presentation at Gurobi Days Digital Academic 2025.

Over the last 12+ years, both Mike and Yuri were lucky enough to be part of companies implementing and using the latest AI (or Machine Learning) while teaching these topics at the University of Chicago and Northwestern.

In this back-and-forth talk, they are going to cover lessons from the early days to the trends we see going forward. We’ll also cover the role of OR and optimization. Yuri comes to the field from the finance industry and Mike from supply chain and operations. They both now teach a class on what this all means for managers. And they don’t always agree with each other!

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Meet the Experts

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Dr. Michael Watson

Associate Professor of Instruction
Northwestern University

Dr. Michael Watson

Associate Professor of Instruction
Northwestern University

He was the co-founder and CEO of Opex Analytics, an AI firm that grew from 0 to 140 data scientists from 2013 to 2019.  Their clients included many Fortune 500 companies.  In 2019, it was acquired by LLamasoft and by Coupa in 2020. At Coupa, he led the AI Center of Excellence until December 2021. He is now a full-time faculty member at Northwestern University in the Department of Industrial Engineering.  He teaches master’s and undergraduate level courses in Supply Chain, Operations Excellence, Managerial Analytics, and Optimization.  He also runs a capstone course where students do projects for companies. He has a Ph.D. from Northwestern, is the lead author of the books “Supply Chain Network Design” and “Managerial Analytics,” and writes at https://MikeTalksAI.substack.com/.

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Dr. Yuri Balasanov

Professor of Instruction
Northwestern University

Dr. Yuri Balasanov

Professor of Instruction
Northwestern University

Yuri Balasanov, Ph.D. is Professor of Instruction and Deputy Director of the MS in Machine Learning and Data Science (MLDS) program at the McCormick School of Engineering, Northwestern University. He earned his M.S. in Applied Mathematics and Ph.D. in Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics from Lomonosov Moscow State University, where he studied under Andrey Kolmogorov and other prominent members of his school. His expertise spans stochastic modeling, advanced data analysis and AI, digital transformation, risk evaluation, and decision-making under uncertainty. Dr. Balasanov has over 20 years of experience in the financial industry, where he has served as a data scientist, lead quantitative researcher, risk manager, and quantitative trader at major financial institutions. He was a member of the Advisory Committee for the U.S. Department of Energy–funded project, Developing a Deep Learning–Computer Vision Framework to Monitor Avian Interactions with Solar Energy Facility Infrastructure, and has advised several other industry initiatives. In parallel with his industry work, Professor Balasanov has more than 25 years of academic experience. As Deputy Director of the MLDS program, he leads industry engagement and teaches a wide range of courses including Data Science, Bayesian Decision Making, Financial Engineering, and Generative AI. He previously taught at the University of Chicago in the programs MS in Financial Mathematics (MSFM) and MS in Applied Data Science (hosted by Data Science Institute), where he also served as Curriculum Director. He has provided professional training to organizations such as the Federal Reserve Banks of Chicago and Philadelphia, PwC, and Chicago Trading Company.

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